


the one with the risotto

by mayerwien



Series: show me how you do that trick [1]
Category: Now You See Me, Now You See Me (2013)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Dylan is Team Dad, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Friendship is Magic, Gen, Papa Dylan, The Eye is Real, The Five Horsemen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 04:44:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/pseuds/mayerwien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny tries to figure out how the Eye works, while Dylan tries to figure out how to make dinner. Only one of them gets it right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the one with the risotto

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own anythingggg only my words

When the Council of the Eye had given Dylan Shrike the go-ahead for his massive revenge scheme (albeit with eyebrows metaphorically raised), they had told him the four he found would have to be exceptional. If his plan failed, he ran the risk of being terminated—a fact he really didn’t care to dwell on, but that they constantly ensured he wouldn’t forget. But they’d never discussed what, if the four proved themselves worthy, would come after.

‘After,’ he was beginning to find out, involved him babysitting the Horsemen while the Council tended to other important matters.

“No offense, but I’d have thought our becoming part of a secret worldwide organization of magicians would have merited more attention from, well, _the organization,”_ commented Danny one evening while lying back on the sofa. He was flicking expertly through a deck of cards at a speed that would have made David Copperfield weep, but the expression on his face radiated boredom. “I mean, I know you said they were busy and that we’d have to wait, but surely rolling out the welcome wagon doesn’t take _that_ much preparation.”   

In the kitchen, Dylan frowned down at the frying pan he was holding. Normally they’d be eating takeout, but Henley had finally put her foot down and insisted that they make proper home-cooked meals at least once a week. She and Merritt were out buying some last-minute groceries, so he was left trying to figure out how to start the risotto.

“It’s more complicated than that,” he admitted finally, stowing the frying pan back in the cupboard and pulling out a larger saucepan. “And I recall asking you to help me with this.”

Danny sat up straight on the sofa and swiveled towards Dylan. “I like complicated,” he said, his eyes gleaming. 

Dylan pointed firmly at the pan. “Help first. Then talk.”

Unhurried, Danny ambled into the kitchen, sweeping his wavy hair out of his forehead with one hand and sliding his deck of cards into his back pocket with the other. He glanced at the haphazard pile of ingredients on the marble countertop, then at the pot of cooked rice Dylan had made earlier and set aside—the one thing he had at least known how to do correctly.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Danny said, “but aren’t you supposed to fry the rice in all the other shit, not cook it separately?”

Scowling, Dylan banged the pan down on the marble countertop. “Well, why don’t you get ‘all the other shit’ together, and then we’ll try frying it. Sound good?”

To his surprise, Danny obediently rolled up his sleeves (nothing was up them, to his credit) and picked up the can of chicken stock. He pulled the nearest drawer open and began to rummage around inside for a can opener, and the gesture almost made Dylan feel bad about snapping at him—which was not something he was used to feeling.

He watched the younger man out of the corner of his eye. Out of the four, he was the hardest to pin down. Merritt was a showoff, all swagger and bluffing and dirty jokes, but at heart fiercely loyal, and not the type to care much what other people thought of him. Henley was utterly charming, and also whip-smart and a master manipulator (probably why he was currently standing in the middle of the kitchen with an apron around his neck, Dylan reflected wryly).

Jack was, when you got past his frightening skill set, your typical teenager—easily excited and full of restless energy, into girls and basketball and nice cars. But J. Daniel Atlas—and Dylan knew that wasn’t even his real name—was a mystery. An _annoying_ mystery.

In the past few days, he’d caught him in little moments of normalcy when he thought no one was watching—cracking half a smile at one of Merritt’s outrageous stories, leaning forward interestedly when Shark Week specials were on TV, giving Henley’s shoulder an awkward pat when he passed her in the hallway. But most of the time, he was a constant stream of barbed comments, the perfect poker face, the absence of tact personified.

(To be fair, he’d made a real effort to be polite towards Dylan at first, out of respect, but after a while it was clear he was straining. Dylan had finally told him he could drop the Padawan act and call him by his first name like everybody else, and things had gone much more smoothly after that.)

Dylan knew about the guy’s past, of course. He knew about all of them. He’d researched all of his candidates perhaps overly carefully before making his selections—so he knew about Henley and Danny’s former partnership, and about Jack’s home situation, and even about Merritt’s wife. But even with his extensive prying, he hadn’t been able to put _all_ the pieces together. Something he felt a strange glow of pride about, as it meant his chosen had covered their tracks well enough to be worthy of the Eye—in his opinion anyway.

But sometimes he wondered. What exactly he’d gotten himself into, bringing them all together, and bringing himself into the picture on top of everything. Whether it had been the right thing to do.

“So...the Council,” Danny prompted, bringing Dylan back to the present.

Dylan shook his head a little and refocused. Danny had poured the stock into the saucepan and was bringing it to a boil on the stovetop. The next step involved olive oil and butter, he was pretty sure; his pride prevented him from just taking out his phone and Googling the recipe.

“The Council of the Eye,” Dylan began carefully, unwrapping the stick of butter slowly while he tried to figure out whether he was supposed to cut a piece off it or just drop the whole thing in the pan, “is composed of the best living magicians, thieves, and assassins in the world.”

“One from each country?” Danny asked.

“That’s right,” replied Dylan, a little surprised.

Danny moved back from the stove to give Dylan space. “So what, like, is David Blaine our rep? Dynamo for England?”

“I said _the best.”_ Trying to look like he knew what he was doing, Dylan sliced off what he estimated to be a third of the butter and dropped it into the bubbling saucepan. It bobbed up and down unhelpfully, and he stuck a mixing spoon in to try to break it up.

 _“_ Certainly well-known magicians, like my father, can be regular members,” Dylan continued, stabbing at the butter with measured force. He uncapped the bottle of olive oil and wrinkled his forehead at it—wasn’t there something fundamentally wrong about putting oil into a water-based mixture? He decided a liberal splash would probably be okay. Anyway, olive oil was good for the heart. “But ‘the best’ means that no one outside of the Eye can know the Council members are even remotely connected with magic.

“By day, they play their parts—billionaire playboy, harassed schoolteacher, chatty cab driver.” He tapped his own temple. “Second-rate FBI agent.” The corner of Danny’s mouth quirked upwards. “But by night, they’re the most powerful people on the planet. They know every single secret of the Eye, all the magic that’s been passed down from ancient times.”

Danny looked suitably impressed. “How much of this stuff are you privy to? I mean, like, as a regular member.”

“Well, my best story involves a game of strip poker, the CEO of a multinational electronics manufacturer, an American bulldog, and two cans of Spam.” Dylan grinned. “But I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you that one. Yet.”

“Onions and garlic,” Danny said unexpectedly, holding out a small glass bowl with the chopped ingredients inside. Slightly caught off-guard, Dylan accepted it and scraped the contents into the saucepan. His watch read 7:30; Merritt and Henley would be back from the grocery soon.

“We should probably put the rice in now.” Dylan picked up the pot and winced, suddenly realizing he’d used too much water—the rice was incredibly mealy. He squished it down experimentally with the flat of the spoon, and decided that a little extra water in an entire can of chicken stock was no big deal. He could just turn the heat up and all the extra liquid would evaporate.

Moving the dial on the stove up a notch, he scooped all of the rice into the saucepan. It fell in with a sound he could only think to describe as a _squelch._ The steam coming off it smelled like butter. He hoped that was a good thing.

“So we’re in the Eye, but not _in_ the Eye, because the Council hasn’t met with us yet,” Danny mused, then turned to face him. “I’m assuming it’s because there’s another initiation test.”

Dylan stopped, his hand hovering over the pan. “There is,” he admitted. “Astute of you.”

Danny just shrugged. “We guessed a long time ago. We figured you had a reason for not telling us.”

“I—“ Dylan hesitated. Actually, he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t told them. It wasn’t like the Council had forbidden him to—but then, there had never been this long a wait time between the initial acceptance and the initiation ceremony before.

And there was that weird feeling bad thing again. Why hadn’t he just, why hadn’t he _bothered_ to give them a little heads up? Told them that first night, _oh by the way, you’re not_ really _in the Eye yet, there’s a final test you have to go through first that could potentially kill you._ He was on their _side,_ for God’s sake—no, he was more than that. He was...  

“At first we thought you’d set us up,” Danny continued blandly, leaning back against the counter. “That there really was no Eye, and all of this was just so you could have your revenge on Bradley and Tressler and the rest of them. Merritt even wanted to hypnotize you at one point, but we talked him out of it.”

“Wouldn’t have worked,” Dylan said, because it was the only thing he could think of to say at the moment. “I have titanium-strength powers of concentration.”

“That’s what I told him.” Danny paused. “But then we got this apartment, and we got to know you a little better. And... we decided that if you were lying to us, you wouldn’t still be around. You wouldn’t even have bothered revealing yourself to us, you’d have left us in the lurch.

“So we concluded it was either, _one,_ there was some other scheme you needed us to help you pull off,” he said, holding up a finger, “or, _two,_ you were telling the truth, and this was all part of that ‘blind obedience’ prerequisite we were informed of a year ago. I pointed out that you could have easily asked us to assist you again without revealing your identity. Ergo, the Eye exists, and we are going to be tested.”  

For a while the kitchen was silent, apart from the gurgling of the risotto. At that moment, Jack padded out of the bedroom, both his hair and his favorite forest green sweater rumpled from sleep. “Hey, guys,” he said, yawning. “What’s up?”

“Risotto,” Dylan said, at the exact same time Danny said, “We were right about the initiation test.”

Jack shrugged. “Cool. Oh, dude, did you say risotto? I love risotto.” He yawned again, stretched like a cat, and swung himself onto the counter. He pulled his knees up to his chest and smiled sleepily.

Dylan clucked his tongue. “Bad form, kid.” He poured some white wine tentatively into the pan. “C’mon, get your feet off the counter before Henley comes home and raises hell about you scuffing up the nice marble.”

Scooting forward and stretching out his long legs, Jack swung his heels back, banging them on the cabinet below the sink. Then he lifted both his arms away from his sides and started swaying from side to side like a kindergartener playing airplane—not entirely abnormal behavior for him—while continuing to talk. “Sooo, this initiation test. Are we allowed to ask what’s on it?”

“Naturally, we’ll be asked what we know about the history of magic, and about the Eye itself,” Danny replied, before Dylan could even open his mouth. “They’ll review our past work and require a practical demonstration of all our skills, most likely in the form of a competition against people who are already in. Finally, they’ll need to be assured of our loyalty, so we’ll have to swear an oath. I’m guessing it involves something symbolic, considering the fact that this is an organization that has its roots in mythology. The Egyptian goddess Ma’at is said to weigh mortals’ hearts on a scale against a feather to test their worthiness, so I’m betting on something along those lines.”

“You been keeping your membership card in a wallet I don’t know about?” Dylan rolled his eyes. “And before you ask, _no,_ I can neither confirm nor deny any of the things you just said,” he said firmly in response to the inquisitive look on Danny’s face, pointedly stripping his own of any expression. He tipped the wine bottle over the pan again, but accidentally poured in rather more of the alcohol than he had originally intended.

Jack flapped his arms. “Is there a study guide we can get somewhere?” he joked. “SparkNotes? Oh, oh—a WikiLeaks document, maybe?”

Danny made a face. “Yeah, I have another question. What happens if we don’t pass the test?”

“I’m not authorized to tell you that either,” Dylan murmured, but he knew when he was being trapped in a corner. And this was one hell of a tiny corner. He closed his fingers absently around the saucepan handle, and then drew back sharply when he felt the hot metal scorch his hand. He sucked his breath in through his teeth in silence. _Damn it._

“Will you have to terminate us?” Danny’s voice was low, his question posed without any hesitation.

Dylan, of course, couldn’t bring himself to answer that. So he just met Danny’s gaze, and then looked away.

But to his astonishment, Jack and Danny exchanged a high-five. “Nailed it!” Jack sang triumphantly, pumping his fist in the air.

To say his jaw hit the floor would have been an understatement. “You find out that you guys could possibly _die,_ and your reaction is _‘nailed it’_?”

“The Eye of Horus, in Egyptian culture, means three things,” Danny answered calmly. “Action. Protection. And anger. Honestly, it’s not that difficult to guess what our fates would be if we failed.”

“We have a bet going with Henley,” Jack added. _“She_ said you would just brainwash us, but we told her she was being way too optimistic and that no Council member worth their shit—oops, sorry—worth their _stuff_ was gonna let us walk free, being who we are and knowing what we know.”

Danny tipped his head to one side. “Besides, we’re not _going_ to fail. We’re the Four Horsemen. Handpicked by you,I might add.” The tone of his voice wasn’t arrogant or even obsequious at all. It was as though he were merely stating an observation.

The saucepan made a shrill whistling noise, and Dylan jumped—it was boiling over. In a moment of panic, he scrambled to switch the stove off. The foam died down, and he picked up the spoon again and stirred the risotto mechanically. He could feel their eyes on the back of his neck.

“You guys should know,” he said finally, his voice a soft rasp, “that—that I wouldn’t. Let anything happen to you, I mean. I’d find a way to get you somewhere safe first, somewhere far away, and then go back and...” He trailed off, putting down the spoon.

“Aww. The cold-hearted Shrike’s going soft on us,” Jack cooed gleefully.    

Dylan fixed him with his best bad-cop glare. “For that, you get to be the taste tester.” (Not much of a punishment, considering how Jack could eat anything that sat still long enough to be put on a plate, but it was the best he could come up with.) He scooped up a heaping spoonful of risotto and held it out tauntingly.

Leaning forward, Jack took the spoon and popped it in his mouth. He chewed for a moment, considering. The swallowing that followed clearly took some extra effort.

“Well?”

“It’s like, like, it has the texture of, um, and I mean this in the nicest way possible—“ Jack glanced up timidly. “Vomit?”

“Thanks a lot,” Dylan muttered, while Danny made the _tsk_ sound that meant he was laughing on the inside.

“What if I said it was like porridge marinated in wine? Would that be better?”

Dylan set the pan in the middle of the dining table and crossed his arms, frowning at it. “Maybe we can save it. Go get the cheese from the fridge.”

“Dylan, _seriously,_ no offense, but I don’t think a little cheese is gonna make this any more, y’know, _edible—“_   

Then they all heard the sound of the front door unlocking, and Dylan grumbled a curse under his breath. Merritt came in first, carrying a paper bag in one arm and holding the door open for Henley, who stepped out of her heels and kicked them towards the shoe rack. He was saying something to her, and she was laughing. Also, she was wearing his hat. It might have been Dylan’s imagination, but a flicker of annoyance (an even bigger one than usual) crossed Danny’s face.

“I think imma take a shower before dinner, chickpea,” Merritt called over his shoulder, dropping the bag on the sofa and going off down the hallway, waving his hand. “You ladies can start eating without me.”

“Hey, Henley, we won the bet!” announced Jack.

Taking off Merritt’s hat, Henley shook her hair out. “Which one? We have at least five bets going right now, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“The one about the Eye. So you owe us twenty bucks. Each,” Jack added with evident relish.

“Oh, come on. _Really?”_ Henley stuck her lip out at Dylan. “And here I was thinking you were so nice.” She shucked off her coat and marched over towards the kitchen, beaming at them. “So how’d the risotto go?”

Dylan and Jack glanced at the disaster on the table, then at each other helplessly. Danny, however, stepped forward smoothly, conveniently blocking Henley’s view of the wine-porridge. “Hey, uh, Henley, your hair looks different today. Did—did you do something with it?” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Get a trim? Dye it a little?”

Henley shot him an exasperated look. “Danny, you know I never touch my hair. What game are you playing?“

“Oh, sorry—must’ve been a trick of the light. My mistake,” he said quickly, and stepped aside.

Dylan stared. The saucepan on the table was gone. In its place was a steaming glass bowl which contained a mound of perfectly cooked, glistening mushroom-studded, parmesan-dusted risotto. Risotto, Dylan noted, that looked suspiciously like the kind that came from the Italian mom-and-pop store down the street. There was a sprig of parsley sitting on top of it, for God’s sake.

“Oh, you guys, it looks fantastic!” Henley exclaimed, putting her hand to her cheek. “You know, I had my doubts about leaving you to cook tonight, but I’m really impressed.”

“Uh, yeah, you know us,” said Jack, who was clearly trying to smother a laugh. “Always full of surprises.” Dylan just shook his head incredulously at Danny as he moved past him around the dining table.

“Second rule of magic,” said Danny out of the corner of his mouth, smirking slightly, “always be prepared,” and he pulled Henley’s chair out for her with a flourish.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys, thanks for reading! I know the scene at the end of the movie suggested otherwise, but I SO wanted the Eye to be real and Dylan to be Team Dad and for the five of them to go on magical magician adventures forever and ever. So this series happened. It's one of the many fanfics I'm counting towards my NaNoWriMo project this year.
> 
> Also in case anyone was wondering, yep the series title is from that song by The Cure. I first heard it in the credits of the film “Just Like Heaven,” which, coincidentally, is...another Ruffalo movie. 
> 
> P.S. I don’t know how to make risotto at all. I based this entire fic off a Jamie Oliver recipe. Cheers!


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